Crime Rangoon

Title: Crime Rangoon
Author: Vivien Chien
Published: December 30, 2025 by Minotaur Books
Format: Kindle, 311 Pages
Genre: Amateur Sleuth
Series: Noodle Shop Mystery #12

Blurb: Cindy Kwan, owner of Asia Village’s bookshop, The Modern Scroll, is privileged to host best-selling author, Charlene Chan for a signing in honor of the writer’s latest book, The Mystery of General Tso.

Lana Lee is equally excited for the appearance of her favorite author and even more so when Cindy asks her to be Charlene’s “handler” for the event. Taking her duties very seriously, Lana stays by the side of the prominent author to assist in anything that she might need.

With a line out the door and stretched through the plaza, Cindy is overjoyed at what a success this is for her shop. But, unfortunately for Cindy, her success comes with a the author is found dead in the mystery aisle, clutching a copy of her own book. Coincidentally the book’s plot matches the details of the murder.

Lana’s boyfriend, Detective Adam Trudeau, is charged with leading the case investigation, but finds himself overwhelmed when he realizes just how much of the book series is mimicked in reality. For the first time in their relationship, Adam calls on Lana to partner up with him to help solve the case. The couple must work through the novel to outwit the murderer, stay one step ahead, and beat the die-hard fan to the last chapter.

My Opinion: I just love this series. Every time I step back into Lana Lee’s world, I know I’m in for a good weekend—between the Mahjong Matrons, the restaurant chatter, and the inevitable chaos Lana and her friends tumble into, it’s always a fun escape.

This time around, the mystery caught me off guard. The culprit wasn’t someone I had on my radar. The clues were there, but I didn’t connect them, which makes me think my spidey sense might be slipping. Honestly, I don’t mind being surprised. It’s part of the charm.

There are conveniences that made me raise an eyebrow. Detective Adam Trudeau asking his girlfriend and her crew for help because he can’t quite figure things out on his own stretches believability. Let’s be real—no detective worth his badge is outsourcing his casework to his girlfriend’s social circle. And yet, here we are.

The suspect pool is a bit of a juggling act, too. There are several characters to keep straight, each hovering close enough to the victim to warrant a second look, even if their motives are more circumstantial than compelling. Lana and her fellow sleuths work through them one by one, fueled by donuts, pizza, late-night coffee, and whatever other snacks cross their path. It’s messy, it’s cozy, and it’s exactly the kind of rhythm this series thrives on.

My one real complaint is how the author seems to be dumbing down Adam Trudeau. He’s always been a steady presence, and watching him lose some of that intelligence is frustrating. Still, it’s not enough to pull me away. I’m in this series for the long haul, quirks and all.

The Will of the Many

Title: The Will of the Many
Author: James Islington
Published: May 23, 2023 by Gallery / Saga Press
Format: Kindle, 639 Pages
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Hierarchy #1

Blurb: The Catenan Republic – the Hierarchy – may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus – what they call Will – to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.

My Opinion: I went into The Will of the Many, genuinely curious why so many readers swear by it. I understand this is only the first installment in a planned four book series, and big fantasy worlds often need time to stretch their legs. Still, a hundred pages in, I was bored. By page three hundred, I wasn’t any less bored, though the plot finally started to show signs of life.

Vis Telimus, our orphaned protagonist, is positioned as clever and capable, but he survives more by luck than skill, and that imbalance wore thin. The world itself runs on a rigid hierarchy where the lower classes must surrender portions of their physical and mental energy—“Will”—to those above them. There’s even a chart at the front of the book explaining who cedes to whom, which tells you exactly how central this system is meant to be. The themes are the usual suspects: power, political maneuvering, class inequality, and a brutal social order that keeps everyone in their place.

And then come the tropes. The elite, dangerous school. The infiltration plot. The competitions and exams that might as well be death traps. The dark history. The hidden heritage. I kept flashing to the familiar beats of Disney stories, only without the comforting promise of a happily ever after. It’s not that these tropes can’t work; they absolutely can, but here they felt predictable rather than invigorating.

I know many readers loved this book, and by the final chapters, I could see the glimmers of what hooked them. There’s momentum, and there’s clearly a long game being set up. But for me, this novel was a reminder that some corners of fantasy simply aren’t my corner. I finished it, but I won’t be continuing the series.

Everything Is Tuberculosis

Title: Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
Author: John Green
Published: March 18, 2025, by Crash Course Books
Format: Hardcover, 198 Pages
Genre: Non-Fiction

Blurb: Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year.

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world—and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.

My Opinion: I can’t be the only one who didn’t realize that John Green—yes, the John Green of The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska—also writes nonfiction. This novel was a surprise on that front alone, but the real surprise was how much I didn’t know about a disease I assumed belonged to history.

Everyone has heard of tuberculosis, but far fewer understand the political machinery, global inequities, and maddening contradictions that surround it. Green points out more than once that the countries with the highest burden of TB often don’t have access to the cure, while the countries that do have the cure rarely see the disease anymore. It’s a bleak little paradox that sets the tone for the rest of the book.

As I kept reading, I began to feel that Green wasn’t trying to give readers a complete education so much as he was nudging us toward our own deeper research. And it worked. I wandered down more than a few rabbit trails before reminding myself to return to what he wanted me to see: tuberculosis is, at its core, a disease of injustice.

One idea kept circling back to me. Centuries from now, readers will look at our 2026 medical practices with the same disbelief we feel when reading about treatments from the past. It’s humbling, and more than a little uncomfortable.

There is repetition in this book, but it’s purposeful. Green keeps pressing on the same truths: cost effectiveness should never determine who gets to live; pharmaceutical companies are driven by profit; and while TB can strike anyone, it is the poor—those without clean water, reliable food, or access to treatment—who bear the heaviest burden. When the world decides which lives are “worth” saving, the same people are always left behind.

The book is an easy read in terms of prose, but not a fast one, and certainly not a light one. The footnotes alone can send you off in ten different directions, and you’ll likely finish with more questions than answers. One question lingered for me: tuberculosis is notoriously good at evolving into drug resistant forms. So, what does the future look like when there have been no new TB drugs in forty years? That’s a long time for a microbe to invent new tricks.

Green doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, but he does make sure you understand the stakes. And once you do, it’s hard to stop thinking about them.

The Anxious Generation

Title: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Author: Jonathan Haidt
Published: March 26, 2024 by Penguin Press
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
Genre: Non-fiction

Blurb: In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.

My Opinion: I picked up this novel mostly because everyone seemed to be talking about it. My kids are grown now, so I’m reading this from the rearview mirror rather than the driver’s seat. Even so, the book hit harder than I expected. It reminded me that, without realizing it, I actually got a lot of things right: real friendships, outdoor play, team activities, independence, responsibilities, basic life skills. All the things we now call “protective factors,” I just called “normal childhood.”

Then, there were the parts I didn’t get right. I trusted my kids with their phones and didn’t monitor usage or set controls. They didn’t have smartphones until they were driving, but still, I wasn’t paying attention the way I should have. Reading this book made me realize how much easier it is for pre-teens and teens today to outsmart the systems parents think are keeping them safe. Location apps can be manipulated. Restrictions can be bypassed. Kids are clever, and parents have to be even more so.

And then there are the tech companies. The book doesn’t mince words, and neither will I: when companies claim they “can’t” fix certain problems, they’re lying. They absolutely can. They just don’t have a reason to. No accountability, no consequences, no incentive.

My emotions swung all over the place while reading. One moment I was thinking, “Kids need to understand technology; it’s their future.” The next, I was frustrated with parents who refuse to step in when they know exactly what’s out there. Then I’d get irritated with schools for not having control, only to get equally irritated with parents who won’t let schools enforce any guidelines. It’s a mess, and everyone thinks they’re the expert.

What surprised me most was how many conversations this book sparked. Not debates about how to raise children, but deeper talks about what previous generations did well, what they botched, and how today’s adolescents are growing up feeling purposeless, inadequate, or desperate to be liked. So much of it comes back to that little device with a front-facing camera and an endless stream of comparison.

The fact that I kept thinking about this book long after I closed it tells me it struck a nerve. It pushed me to examine not just what I did as a parent, but what I’m doing now. My own phone habits. My own harm when it comes to algorithms. My own need to get outside more, learn new things, and take responsibility for the way I let technology shape my days.

This book wasn’t written for my age group, but it still taught me something important: it’s never too late to set boundaries, even with ourselves.